Heading North
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: North. North was a place that seemed to promise safety, of protection, of possible freedom that Padma was slowly beginning to believe didn't even exist. She would spend hours and hours, tying red and purple strings into Pansy's hair and listening to the blonde girl talk about the north, like somehow heading in one general direction was going to save them both.


_**AU, Padma is a Muggle, Voldemort won. **_

…

_"I swear that when our lips touch I can taste the next sixty years of my life."-Rudy Francisco_

…

North. North was a place that seemed to promise safety, of protection, of possible freedom that Padma was slowly beginning to believe didn't even exist.

She would spend hours and hours, tying red and purple strings into Pansy's hair and listening to the blonde girl talk about _the north_, like somehow heading in one general direction was going to save them both.

It was all Pansy talked about anymore, going away and starting a new life, just the two of them, away from the others who didn't see the world the same way they did.

Pansy talked about sleeping on top of flower petals spread across a mattress, living outdoors somewhere where they couldn't be found.

But Pansy was a dreamer, imagining the northern parts of England where Voldemort didn't yet have full reign to be the safest place for the two of them.

She always spoke of one day dropping by Padma's house and grabbing her before running off to the nearest safe haven before beginning the long, hopefully promising adventure north.

Padma didn't think they had a chance of making it more than a few kilometres before getting caught, but she could at least admit that all of Pansy's talk attracted her.

That's why Padma had snuck out of her house right around midnight, giving it her best effort to sneak past the patrolling Death Eaters that managed the area where she lived.

It had been easier than she thought, sneaking past the cloaked wizards and hopping aboard a bus, hoping that Pansy hadn't been just messing with her when she gave Padma instructions to her house a few weeks back.

After all, the punishment for a Muggle or Muggleborn that was caught in wizard-only territory was severe; the Muggles would be taken away, never to be seen again.

(That was what had happened to that Granger girl just a few years back, caught trying to see her wizard boyfriend, who had also been kidnapped and thrown into Azkaban for consorting with Muggles. Rumour was that they were both dead by now.)

The address led Padma not to a house but to a run-down looking house that was missing a front door and had barely any grass, most of it dead.

Padma tentatively went inside, noticing that there was a staircase leading down to what she guessed was probably the basement.

There was nervous laughter as Padma slipped down the stairs, and she leaned against the wall, closing her eyes as she imagined some men in robes uniform marching up towards her, demanding to see her papers.

It wasn't likely that there were any Death Eaters or wizard-supporters hiding around just to capture one disobedient Muggle girl, but it had happened before, and so Padma moved slowly, hugging the walls and hoping to whatever deity was in charge of all this crap would see fit to take care of her.

But she finally made it to the door without any incidents and when Padma gave it a small knock, it was opened by a short, pale boy with dark hair and green eyes stuck behind a pair of circular glasses.

He looked her up and down briefly, turned to look behind him, and then back at Padma, giving her a suspicious glance.

"Patil?" he asked, and she nodded. "We've been wondering when you'd show up. Your girlfriend swore up and down you'd be by sooner rather than later, but I was having my doubts."

"She's uh…she's not my girlfriend…"Padma mumbled, following the boy into the room, which was dusty and mostly seemed to contain large stacks of papers with various pictures stamped across the front, labelling wanted criminals.

On one of the pictures, I saw the same boy who was beckoning me to follow him to a stuffed couch, where a few other teenagers were sitting. The name on the paper read _Harry J. Potter, wanted for aiding and abiding Muggles and Muggleborns. _

"We're sort of a hodge-podge here, sorry," Harry J. Potter said as Padma nearly tripped over a toolbox. "Newest headquarters for right now, and everything's rather screwy until we can get the place fixed up. But when you've got no guarantee of who'll be here next week…well, what's the point in trying for anything very permanent, you know?"

Padma nodded, half-listening, but she was really looking for Pansy, because even if they weren't officially…_official_ dating, she never wanted to be away from the blonde girl.

"What's this place even for?" she asked Harry as they passed the couch, waving at the three teenagers who were sitting there, shifting through paperwork. None of them looked up or made any acknowledgement that they saw her or Harry. "I mean, what do you guys do here, with all this paper? All this…dust?"

"We help," Harry replied, opening a door and leading her up a staircase that creaked when they took a step. "We assist those in need of assistance. You know, Muggles with no home, Muggleborns who've had their family taken from them."

"So, what, are you guys trying to be some sort of Underground Railroad here? Protecting the people? For the people, by the people, is that what this is? It doesn't seem like hiding back here in a dilapidated house full of wanted posters is going to help anyone."

She was being rude, but she was terrified of being caught, and when Padma got scared, she sometimes said things she didn't necessarily mean.

But Harry didn't seem to mind, only chuckling and directing her towards a door that was nearly hanging off its hinges.

"Your not-girlfriend is up in here," he said, leading her inside to see Pansy sitting up eagerly on a spindly desk chair.

She leapt to her feet, though, the second Padma came in, throwing her arms around the other girl, kissing her all over. When she pulled away, Pansy was smiling.

"I missed you so, _so _much, do you know that?" She kissed Padma again and then seemed to notice Harry still standing in the doorway. "Oh, Potter. You're here."

"Yes, hello." Harry gave them a small wave before slipping over to the window, peeking out to see the dying yard outside. "I think we've been compromised even sooner than I had thought possible. Someone seems to be skulking outside, and judging by that cloak, it's probably _not _Neville come by on another run."

"What?" Pansy demanded, and suddenly all feelings of intimacy were gone as they both moved to the window to see a tall looking man making his way to the front door. "What do we do? There's, like, sixty of us here. They can't….they can't just…"

"Some of us will get away, I suspect," Harry replied, a scared look crossing his face as they hurried back towards the door, Pansy calling out for people to run away as they walked through the house. "But not all of us. I think…someone must have spilt about us, you know?"

"Yeah, but wh-"

The windows shattered as men in cloaks stormed in, each holding their wand aloft. Immediately, both Pansy and Harry also had their wands out, and Padma was pushed behind them to cower.

"You are all under arrest for aiding and abiding illegal Muggles and Muggleborns. Drop your wands and any other weapons and come with us," one of the bigger men said, stepping forward, but instead, there was a flash of light from behind, and a few of the Death Eaters fell.

"Nev!" Harry yelled, and the next thing Padma knew, she was on the floor and there was light everywhere and then bodies and blood and…

It had all happened so fast that Padma was struggling to process it as Pansy fell backwards, the light leaving her grey eyes, and Padma screamed.

"No! No!" she yelled, moving to grab Pansy's body…her love's body…that was still, with no heartbeat and no signs of life. "No! Pansy, please, please. Wake up, come back, please. Just wake up, don't be dead. Don't be dead, you're not dead. You can't be dead, that's not fair. That's not fair."

What had happened to the girl with red strings in her hair, the one who talked about running north, and of beds with flower petals spread across the sheets?

Padma leaned over, kissing her…her _girlfriend _one last time as a Death Eater stormed down on her, and for a second, Padma could see herself spending the rest of her life with this girl, just kissing her, loving her, somewhere where they could both be safe.

In the next instant, the world was dark and Padma was just another body that they would clean up later. Eventually. When someone got around to it.

But for a brief while there, she was somebody's. She was someone's. and she had been loved, and she _had _loved, and for Padma, that sort of last memory, the one of her lips on Pansy's, was the best sort of memory of all.


End file.
